


B is for Back To Basics

by Jedi Buttercup (jedibuttercup)



Series: JB's Stargate Soup Recipes [10]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: 5 Things, Alphabet Soup Challenge, Episode: s03e05 Learning Curve, Gen, Post-Series, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-03 02:38:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8693113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/pseuds/Jedi%20Buttercup
Summary: Jack visits Orban again for another exchange.  (Or: five more things SG-1 taught the Orbanians about 'fun', and one thing Jack learned in return.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> For SG-1 kidfic alphabet soup. The Orban episode always bothered me; what to do with that feeling, but fic it out?

Jack O'Neill's feelings were mixed as he stepped through the stargate to Orban, a planet he hadn't seen in person in-- was it eight years ago now? Something like that.

On the one hand, it was good to see the SGC's network of allies expanding again now that the Ori had been defeated; advanced worlds willing to trade with the Tau'ri had always been thin on the ground, and their initial exchange with the Orbanians had helped Carter develop Earth's first naquadah reactor. They could always use more honestly acquired high-octane tech. Plus, it was good to get out of the office; excuses to go off world had been hard to come by since his promotion to Homeworld Security.

But on the other hand... he'd seen the cost of the Orbanians' method of accelerating their world's learning curve up close and personal, and from what he'd been told, they were still pumping babies full of nanites with ticking clocks to make that happen. The fact that Jack had helped Merrin bring the idea of fun back to her world and improve quality of life for the other former Urrone children hadn't done much to soften the fact that she'd had to give up everything that made her, her to do it. Twelve was far too young to be asked to make that kind of sacrifice.

Several more years of busting their way into off-planet cultures and changing them both for better and for worse had given him a little more perspective on the issue, but he still didn't like it one bit. He'd have to visit Merrin again while he was here; see what had become of the sweet, serious kid he'd smuggled out of the mountain for an afternoon of playground games and art. He'd heard she'd been recovering well, before contact had been cut off with Orban during one of Earth's many squabbles with the Goa'uld. Maybe he'd feel better about this new deal to see that he'd made _some_ kind of difference, if not as much as he would have wanted.

Kalan was waiting for him when he stepped out into Orban's Mesoamerican-themed gate room. The one who'd brought Merrin to Earth all those years ago, and whose Urrone son had been tasked to learn about the Goa'uld from Teal'c. The guy looked genuinely pleased to see Jack, making the welcome sign with his hands and sketching a quick bow of greeting in his direction.

"General O'Neill! It is good to see you again. Thank you for agreeing to come," he said, smiling. "The others have gone ahead; I will take you to them."

"Kalan," Jack responded, offering a perfunctory smile in return as he stepped down to the bright mosaic in the center of the room. "So does that mean you can fill me in now on exactly what kind of 'exchange' you have in mind? Not that it's not great to be here, but I have to admit, I've been a little curious."

It had to be _something_ interesting for them to insist on _all_ of SG-1-- the team members they'd met eight years ago, as well as the current iteration-- as the exchange group.

"Oh, much the same as the first; information, primarily," Kalan said cheerfully, as he turned to lead him away. "You have advanced a great deal in the last few years, but still not to our level in many areas; I believe the team that went back to your world was carrying one of the shield devices we used to protect ourselves from the Goa'uld, and those others you say were called the Ori. We are most interested in learning more about them, and any other peoples you have met while we were not accepting visitors. But when we were informed your arrival would be slightly delayed-- I must admit, I seized the opportunity to ask your team to assist with some... less strategic information, as well."

From the way his smile widened, Jack had little doubt that 'opportunity' would have been arranged some other way, if his own schedule hadn't given them the excuse. "Well, we'll have to discuss any official alterations to the terms later, but for now...." 

He let the sentence trail off as they approached a familiar-looking children's home, bracketed by stone halls open to the sky. The last time he'd been there, the walls had been marked with multicolored Crayola scribbles; now, they were covered in tiled and painted scenes that blended into one another down the hall's entire length. Some were nearly photorealistic; others were more impressionistic or obviously imaginary. Many featured children in uniform-like white outfits holding hands, or the Pyramid of the Suns framed by modern high-rises; a few, though, looked an awful lot like Carter's old lab, or a certain playground behind a middle school in Colorado Springs.

"Nice," he said, taking in what could only be the product of many hours and many hands working together, ranging from nanite-precise to those more concerned with expression than accuracy. "Now that's impressive. The kids do all this?"

"Everyone took part," Kalan explained proudly, pausing by a family portrait of three crudely drawn stick figures posed in front of a much more detailed image of one of the local houses. "This one is mine. We have learned, or perhaps relearned, much of such 'art' since Merrin's Averium. It is not often that we encounter a field of study that cannot be mastered simply by accumulating more facts; it is former Urrone, in fact, who have produced many of our most popular works. It is the same with the 'games' Merrin brought back, as well. The ballcourt beside the Pyramid of the Suns had not been used in many centuries; reconstructing its purpose has been a project for both scholars and physical artists alike."

Physical artists? Jack liked the sound of that; a few decades and a couple of knee surgeries ago, he might have asked if he could join in. "So Merrin, and Tomin-- kids like them have careers now?"

"Yes," Kalan replied, nodding. "Much to the enrichment of our culture. In fact, many Urrone, having observed that preferences often continue in the absence of memory, have begun to specify ahead of time which art they would prefer to be taught after their Averiums."

"You don't say," Jack replied dryly, reminded again of Merrin's wordless joy in the box of Crayolas. He was beginning to get an idea what Kalan was after, here. "What other arts can they choose from?"

"Exactly the information we seek!" Kalan replied. "So many of our early texts have been lost; we retain very little knowledge of the arts and crafts of our ancestors, and our attempts to learn more from your people were cut short when we sealed Orban's gate to defend ourselves from the Goa'uld. I asked your teammates if they would each share another method of 'fun' with the children." 

It was just as well Jack _hadn't_ got there earlier, then; pottery was one of the few crafts the Orbanians _had_ retained after being taken from Teotihuacán by the Goa'uld, and somehow, he didn't think a bunch of twelve year olds would see golf as an art form. Their loss. That did beg the question, though... what did Mitchell think of as 'fun'? Or Vala, for crying out loud? Hopefully, Daniel had talked her into keeping it PG.

"Sounds up their alley," he said. "And they're doing that... here?" Now that he was listening for it, he could hear the sounds of some kind of big ball bouncing off stone not too far away.

"Oh, yes! Through here," Kalan gestured toward a stone archway opening off one side of the hall. "Come and see."

There was, in fact, a ballgame in progress through that arch, in a big courtyard shaped like a capital letter I. Jack spied Colonel Mitchell halfway down its length, surrounded by a bunch of kids and young adults mostly dressed in white. Half of them were wearing the traditional wrapped headgear he'd seen on all the Urrone during their first visit; the other half, plus Mitchell, were hatless, and they seemed to be playing a very rough version of basketball. It was complicated by the fact that the big stone hoops were fixed to the courtyard walls _sideways_ rather than horizontally, but Mitchell seemed to be making do, accepting a pass from one of the bigger kids and then leaping up to bat the ball through the hoop with a triumphant shout.

Jack cleared his throat loudly, then raised an eyebrow at Mitchell as the players all turned to stare.

"Uh, General O'Neill, hey," Mitchell grinned back, wiping sweat out of his eyes. "Is it that time already?"

"It is that time," Jack allowed. "Having fun, I see?"

"Are you kidding? This is like a vacation, not a mission. Speaking of fun-- you up for a game? These kids are actually giving me a run for my money. I tried to get them to show me what _they_ play in here, but they wanted a demo first, and they're picking it up pretty quick." 

A few decades and new knees ago, alas. "Ah, no; that's all right. Carry on," he replied, gesturing back toward the hoops. "We're going to convene the formal exchange meeting in...?" He glanced a question toward Kalan.

"In one-- I believe your word is hour?" Kalan nodded to Jack, then beamed at Mitchell. "This is excellent; are there any other games you can teach them that can be played with the ball in this court?"

One of the kids threw the ball back to Mitchell; he caught it, then bounced it thoughtfully, glancing down both ends of the courtyard. "Actually, if you've got any netting, and maybe something I can use to build some frames...." he said, leadingly.

The kids lit up, babbling at him and pulling at his hands to lead him toward the far exit. Jack shook his head in amusement and waved him out. "Have fun!"

"The others are here," Kalan said, leading him back toward the open hallway and gesturing to an adjacent building, part of the children's home.

Jack didn't know what he'd been expecting inside, but he had to quirk a smile at the sight of Teal'c in a meditation pose, surrounded by a bunch of kids attempting the same. A few looked as blissfully peaceful as their teacher; the rest behaved more like normal children, squirming and sighing and giggling with each other until Teal'c calmed them with a quiet, firm word.

"Teal'c, how's it hanging?" Jack broke into the hushed atmosphere with a grin.

Teal'c cracked one eye open, arching the brow above it as he assessed his visitors. "Satisfactorily, O'Neill," he said, perfectly deadpan. Then he opened the other eye and inclined his head in Jack's direction. "I am pleased you were able to attend."

"Yeah, me too. So-- you all having fun here?"

Teal'c turned his attention back to the stirring circle of kids, giving them all an intent look; they burst into giggles again, then turned to Jack and chorused as one: "Indeed."

Jack chuckled, bemused at the newest evidence of Teal'c's sneaky ability to establish a camaraderie with just about every kid he met, and waved a hand in their direction. "Sounds like it. Carry on, then; we're meeting about an hour from now, Teal'c. Mitchell'll round you up when it's time."

Teal'c inclined his head again, then settled back into his pose and set about encouraging his little mini-me's to calm back down.

Kalan's expression grew even more pleased as he led Jack further into the building.

Carter's room was next; he'd guessed that from the first moment he'd stepped out of the sun from the faint sound of some kind of whistling music carrying to his ears. He knew Carter hadn't brought her new cello, but the Orbanians must have had, or been able to provide her with several examples of something that could approximate a woodwind instrument; the sound was pretty distinctive.

"Yes, that's right," she was saying as they stepped into her room, eyes bright as she addressed one of the children. "Many musicians on my world also have some talent at math. Though having a natural aptitude for one does not necessarily guarantee success at the other. You need emotion, and practice-- a _lot_ of practice-- to really play music well; I have so many other demands on my time that I'm basically still an amateur."

"So it is both a physical art, _and_ an aesthetic one," another teenager said thoughtfully, holding something vaguely flutelike in his hands.

"Yes, Tomin," Carter agreed, smiling at him as she raised her own instrument. "That's exactly right. So with that in mind, let's try it again...."

Tomin? Jack snuck a surprised look at Kalan, and saw the pride written all over his face. Definitely his son, then; talking again, even if the words did come a little slowly. Wow.

He caught Kalan's eye, then made a quiet gesture with a finger across his lips and pulled back out of the room. "Daniel?" he murmured quietly; he hadn't seen any other exit from the room Carter was in.

Kalan nodded, then led him to another room with wide, unbarred windows and another door letting in the afternoon sunshine.

"See, it's about the rhythm of the words as much as it is the rhymes themselves," Daniel was holding forth to a small court of mostly older children. "Or lack thereof, as the case may be. There are a lot of factors that combine to make poetry as much an art form as music, which can paint mental imagery to rival any mural on a wall. Here's another example, in what we call iambic pentameter-- that means 'five feet,' or five pairs of metered syllables."

He took a breath, then busted out a verse Jack recognized from Shakespeare: an intersection of the historian and the linguist that had rarely come into play on SG-1's missions. Jack had been wondering if he'd catch Danny teaching senet, but he probably ought to have expected something more like this; exercising their young minds in a way different from anything the others were demonstrating.

"'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer's lease hath all too short a date.' May being one of the spring months back home, when many flowering plants begin to-- ah, Jack," Daniel cut himself off in surprise. "Uh, is it that time already?"

"You know, Mitchell asked me the same thing? Sounds like you guys have been enjoying yourselves."

"Ah, well..." Daniel flashed a smile around at the young people around him. He'd always had an expressive face; Jack had been wondering what his former teammate's barometer would tell him this time, and was cautiously pleased to see it pointing in the vague direction of 'hope'. "I think it's more that the kids have been enjoying themselves," Daniel continued. "I've been going through several forms of verbal performance with them-- though don't worry, I left the limericks for you."

Jack chuckled at the dry tone of the last few words, and scrounged his memory for a cleaner example of the genre just to spite him. "You betcha. They _are_ supposed to be having fun here, after all." He cleared his throat, then declaimed: "A canner, exceedingly canny, one morning remarked to his granny, 'A canner can can anything that he can; but a canner can't can a can, can he?'"

Daniel raised his eyebrows, as if mildly astonished that Jack had actually come up with one suitable for young ears, and brought his hands together for a few claps of applause. The kids startled at the gesture, then imitated it cautiously, glancing between Daniel and Jack.

"Dr. Jackson, what is the meaning of this gesture?" one of the kids still wearing the necklace of the Urrone asked with a frown.

Daniel looked genuinely surprised at that, turning to the kid to answer-- and Jack knew they'd lost him again for a while. "Last one?" he asked, turning back to Kalan.

Kalan's eyes had widened appreciably at some point during Jack's recitation, but he nodded at the question, and pointed toward the outer door.

"Half an hour, Daniel!" Jack left the room with a parting word, then stepped through to see Vala Mal Doran flat on her back on a lawn of short-cropped grass, staring up at the sky.

Vala was surrounded mostly by the youngest kids he'd seen so far, all of them also gazing upward, mostly with an arm or a leg pressed against her or one of the other kids. A particularly tiny example, a little girl who couldn't be even a year old, was cuddled in the crook of Vala's arm; Vala looked a little stiff, but her voice was animated as she gestured with her free hand toward the sky.

"There," she said. "That one-- it's _definitely_ a tel'tak. That's a small Goa'uld transport ship."

"Naaaah," one of the little boys next to her shook his head against the grass. "It's the Pyr'mid of the Suns. See the steps on the sides?" He stabbed a small index finger toward the same tuft of cloud.

"It could be," Vala agreed mildly, then pointed toward another cloud formation, this one much rounder in shape. "How about that one?"

"Oh, I know! It's the _gate_ ," one of the little girls said, in excited tones.

"No, it's a ball!" one of the others disagreed.

"It's one of the suns!" a third child spoke up.

"Or a calendar wheel," a fourth, older voice suggested-- and Jack turned to see a young blonde woman at the back of the room, balancing a sketchpad across her knees under a rapidly moving pencil.

He'd have recognized that face anywhere, even eight years older. "Merrin?" he said, hopefully.

The woman looked up with an inquisitive, distant expression, and his heart briefly sank. But then her face cleared, and she smiled and waved at him. 

"Oh good, you're here, General," Vala said with a sigh of relief. "Care to take this little one off my hands so I can sit up without making her scream?"

Merrin's expression turned bright and amused at the question; Jack laughed softly, then turned to pick up the infant. "Sorry to break up your little cloud watching session."

"No you're not; but I don't mind," Vala replied, then climbed to her feet and reached out to rub a hand over the baby's downy head. "I missed this stage-- all of these stages, for the most part-- with Adria, but a little goes a long way. Is Daniel still playing word games inside?"

"More or less," Jack agreed.

"I'll start rounding the others up then," she said, then abruptly plucked the infant back out of his arms, handed her to Kalan, and began tugging the Orbanian toward the doorway. 

"Come, children. It is time to return," Kalan took her cue, and there was a general round of 'awws' as the other kidlets got up and trooped into the building, too.

Leaving him and Merrin alone. Sneaky Vala. Jack saluted her ironically as she passed, then ambled toward the corner Merrin had chosen to work in.

The picture she was drawing wasn't as photographic as those first 'sketches' she'd made of her naquadah reactor, relying on the network of nanites in her brain for exactness. But she'd captured a hint of wistfulness in the curve of Vala's mouth, and the bright happiness of the children puppy-piled around her: beauty, rather than perfection.

He took a deep breath, then let it out. He _did_ feel better now. Sneaky Kalan. 

"Hi, Merrin," he said.

Merrin looked up and smiled in return, as happy as any of the others. "Hi, Jack."

They'd saved a lot of kids during his time on SG-1, but they'd failed their share as well, and Merrin's fate had lingered in Jack's thoughts long after they'd lost her. But while she might not be the same girl she'd been before, he'd failed her again by thinking that way, hadn't he? Her life hadn't ended that day; in fact, it had only just begun.

The exchange could wait a little longer. It was time to reacquaint himself with an old friend.


End file.
